Information on the Three is, understandably,
hard to come by. Not only are they secretive individuals to begin with,
they are also forced to conceal themselves from the forces of the Greys,
whose enemies they are and who have dealt them some significant defeats.
And their backer, more on whom below, has significant reasons for remaining
secret. But I am not without resources of my own, and have found some information
on the Three.

The first member of the Three, and the
one I know the least about, is called “The Drummer.” I have found no background
information on him, and apart from his extraordinary skill with computers
and machinery I can tell you nothing about him.

The second member, who I’m led to believe
is called “Jakita Wagner” by the other members of the Three, comes from
a notable line, although some of her ancestors are not ones to be proud
of.

In 1870 Israel di Murska, a Hungarian Jew,
traveled with his wife to Russia to protest the treatment of Jews in Czarist
Russia. Ironically, Russia at this time was undergoing a brief and rare
period of liberality in its treatment of minorities, with the Emancipation
Edict of 1861 and the zemstvo law of 1864 guaranteeing certain basic
rights to Jews and other formerly oppressed and hated outsiders. Compared
to the situation before and after their arrival, the di Murskas had chosen
a very good time–again, relatively speaking–for the Jews in Russia. Unfortunately,
he and his wife were somewhat notable and very outspoken, and so came to
the attention of the otherwise incompetent Third Section, the Russian political
police force. The di Murskas were captured almost immediately on their
entrance into Russia and separated. Israel was tortured for weeks and then
sent to Siberia, where he was subjugated to hard labor so brutal that he
was eventually paralyzed from the waist down. Israel’s wife, a great beauty,
was given to a Siberian official and made his mistress. She died from shame
and misery.

Israel was freed in 1880 and returned to
Europe. He liquidated his considerable assets and moved to England, the
rage and hatred for Russia burning ever-brighter in his heart. He brought
his daughter Zalma (1864-1890) with him, leaving his son Stefan behind,
and together they plotted an end to the Russian empire, Zalma being if
anything more committed to the violent overthrow and destruction of the
Czarist system than her father. They made two attempts to do so, each involving
like-minded conspirators–the terrorist organization Terror, which plagued
Russia through the last two decades of the 19th century–and
neither successful.

The first took place in 1880, when Zalma
discovered and seduced Richard Arnold. Arnold, an inventor, had discovered
two liquefied gases which, when combined, exploded spontaneously, as well
as a clockwork escapement which allowed for the propulsion of heavier-than-air
crafts. Arnold’s discoveries, united with the di Murskas’ wealth, led to
the construction, in 1881, of an armed dirigible, the Terror. Israel di
Murska and various trusted members of Terror took the Terror to Russia
in March of that year, leaving Zalma behind. The Terror fought its way
through the Czar’s war balloons and bombed Moscow on March 13, killing
Czar Alexander II.

This did not, however, bring about the
great liberation that the di Murskas and Terror had anticipated for so
long. The immediate reaction was a furious attack on the Terror by the
remnants of the Russian air fleet. This attack failed, as the Terror’s
guns were more than a match for the simple weapons of the Russian aerostats,
but it delayed the Terror long enough for news of the Tsar’s assassination
to reach Europe and England. When the Terror attempted to return to England,
it was met over the North Sea by another airship, which engaged the Terror
in battle and destroyed it. Whose airship this was is not known, but I
suspect (wholly without proof, I admit) that the airship was the property
of Her Royal Majesty Queen Victoria’s Secret Service, and that the Terror
was shot down to prevent a successful attack on 10 Downing Street and Buckingham
Palace.

The second and more important reaction
was the succession of Alexander III to the rule of Russia. Alexander III
was a far more determined and conservative ruler than Alexander II had
been, and the violent death of his father spurred on Alexander III to crush
the revolutionary and terrorist movements plaguing Russia. This led to
much greater repression than Russia had suffered from under Alexander II,
with much increased repression of religious dissenters, Roman Catholics,
Protestants, national minorities, and especially Jews. The pogroms in the
Ukraine began soon after Alexander III’s succession to the throne, and
the final effect of Israel di Murska’s act was to worsen the lot of the
Jews in Russia, rather than to improve them.

Zalma, in England, did not appreciate this
bitter irony, however. Her anti-Russian mania increased, and metastasized
to include all the governments of Europe. She cast aside Arnold, having
taken from him all that she saw as being useful–his ideas–and seeing him
as an impediment. She was only 17 at this time, but was already a cold,
manipulative woman. (Arnold went on to a mundane, successful life in the
United States, with his oldest son, Richard, achieving some fame as a sportsman
at Raritan College in 1919, 1920, and 1921) She befriended an English journalist
and told her story to him; when it was published, years later, it was given
a happy ending and the horrible aspects of the Russian system were greatly
played up, though not inaccurately portrayed. The Russians, meanwhile,
refused to admit that their security had been so badly compromised by one
airship and informed the rest of the world that the terrorists who had
killed Czar Alexander II were Russians, rather than extra-nationals.

Zalma then spent some years positioning
herself to gain power to exact her revenge. She was secretly married to
an English prince in 1889, but the prince, perhaps under the influence
of Queen Victoria, had the marriage annulled before it was consummated.
Infuriated at the failure of her plans, she returned to Terror, whose head
she had become, and began laying plans for a sudden, violent overthrow
of all the governments of Europe. In 1890 she attempted to make this a
reality by placing Terror agents in every capital of Europe and then launching
anthrax-laced balloons into the capitals, but she was stopped at the last
minute by John St. Leger, an agent of the British government. who she had
met earlier in London and with whom she’d carried on a brief affair. She
was captured by St. Leger, but on being imprisoned was discovered to be
pregnant by him. After the child was born Zalma committed suicide by taking
poison. A different writer fictionalized the final years of her life, setting
them in the future and making them slightly more palatable to the English
reading public.

We will return to Zalma’s child momentarily.
Zalma’s brother Stefan, meanwhile, had forged false documents for himself
and emigrated to Russia, where by dint of great effort and subterfuge worked
his way up through the ranks of the Russian military to become Count Pahlen,
the Prime Minister of Czar Alexander III. In 1894, following an unsuccessful
love affair with the Countess Ostermann (a distant relation of the already-mentioned
Alsop Osterman) Count Pahlen carried out a successful coup, murdering Tsar
Alexander III. Unfortunately, Count Pahlen did not anticipate that Nicholas
II would act quickly to avenge his father, and Count Pahlen was executed
less than a day after seizing power.

Zalma’s child, a daughter, was given to
a British family and raised as “Sarah Wagner” (1891-1946). Sarah Wagner’s
life was controversial by the standards of the day, including numerous
love affairs and several avant-garde and Dadaist poems and plays. She bore
out of wedlock a son, John Wagner (1915-1996), whose life was unremarkable.
John Wagner’s son Joseph (1943-present) fathered Jakita (1974-present),
who is the second member of the Three.

Jakita’s
personal history and the circumstances under which she joined the Three
are not known, and as with the other members of the Three I am unaware
of their financial backing. I was unable to meet any of the Three, but
there are scattered reports by witnesses of the Three and of Jakita. She
is reportedly exceptionally strong, very tough, and very fast, more than
capable of holding her own in a fight. Some reports, in fact, credit her
with superhuman abilities, and while I’ve been unable to verify this such
things are not, after all, unheard of. Given her ethnic background, she
may possess genes altered from her ancestors’ exposure to the Suwahib meteor
(see my aforementioned article on “An Extraordinary Family of the Wold
West” for an exploration of this phenomenon), in which case she would be
capable of super-human strength, speed, and invulnerability. I am not currently
in the position to investigate the matter, but hope to later.

The third member of the Three, and the
one with the most distinguished personal history, is Elijah Snow. Like
Jakita Wagner, some of the facts of his personal history and family background
are known, but there are significant gaps in what I’ve been able to uncover.

As mentioned above Vincent Norroy fathered
two children. The first, John, was in turn the father of Yorke Norroy.
The second child was Laura Norroy (1843-1900). Laura married Scott Doyle,
and their oldest daughter was Alma (1866-1923). Alma married a well-to-do
New York industrialist (originally from Texas, and with a pronounced Texan
accent) named Snow, and her first son, Elijah, was born on January 1, 1900,
the same date of birth of James Anthony.

Much
about Snow is unclear. That he is physically exceptional in several ways
is undeniable. A full century after the date of his birth, he looks to
be only in his mid-forties. He has lost none of his vitality, physical
strength, or wits. He is also reputed to be a “cold bastard,” but I have
received conflicting reports on just what this means. It might be that
he is capable of thermal subtraction, a “superpower” the likes of which
only Superman and one or two others have been capable of. Or it might be
that, like a few others in this article, he is simply a cold, hard man.
But his unchanged physical capabilities would seem to argue that he is
somehow more than human, in the way that many of those touched by the lingering
effects of the Wold Newtonian meteors have been. It may be that the ancestors
of Elijah Snow’s father were exposed to the Red River Stone (see Dr. Powers’
“Rocks and Trees” article) and gained extraordinary abilities thereby.
Without a thorough physical examination of Snow, however, or at the very
least a personal interview of him, I am unable to make a judgment.

Likewise, his personal history is mostly
obscured, either by design or simply coincidence. The following is what
I have been able to discover:

January 1, 1900. Elijah
Snow is born to Alma Snow.

1920. A young Elijah Snow
locates and trains with Sherlock Holmes, being instructed by Holmes in
his methods. When Snow might have encountered Holmes is unknown. One possible
date would be July, 1927, when Holmes visited Arkham, Massachusetts, to
investigate the disappearance of Randolph Carter. Snow would have been
27 at this time, however. This is by no means too old to be instructed
in the ways of detection and crime-fighting, but my personal intuition
is that Snow’s training and initiation into the world of crime-fighting
began before that. I have no evidence for the dates of Holmes’ training
of Snow, but my guess is that it took place before 1924, when Holmes perfected
his royal jelly bee pollen elixir. I would suppose it occurred in 1919
or 1920, before Holmes’ marriage to Mary Russell.

1920s. Elijah Snow teams
with Holmes and two other individuals. The nature of this group, what brought
them together, how long they were teamed, and what they did while together
is so far unknown to me, although I am expecting to receive a packet of
information this December which will provide further information on the
group. I have been able to narrow the date of their teaming to only “the
Twenties,” but from other available information–Holmes’ life, for example–I
would suppose this 1924 or 1925, following Holmes’ reversal of aging.

The
identity of the other two individuals cannot be confirmed, but I have one
account that names them. The first individual called himself “Dracula”
and was a vampire. Those of you not sufficiently acquainted with the secret
history of the fantastic and strange of our world will scoff, but the educated
and informed reader is well aware that vampires are a reality, and that
they have been opposed by many a notable hero, from Professor van Helsing
to the notorious Spider. However, the personal history of Vlad Tepes, better
known as “Dracula,” is well-documented, and I do not believe it possible
for Vlad Tepes to have been working with Elijah Snow and Sherlock Holmes
in the 1920s, especially as they had previously clashed in 1887. My guess
is that the vampire was formerly a citizen of Selene, the legendary Serbian
“city of the vampires.” Selene was reported to have been destroyed in 1874
when the novelist Ann Radcliffe led a group of vampire hunters into the
city and burned the heart of Goetzi, the ruler of Selene, thus destroying
not only Selene but the other vampires in the city, but vampires have been
reported killed before and returned to plague humanity. Perhaps the vampire
who accompanied Holmes and Snow was none other than Goetzi himself. I have
no way of knowing for sure.

The other member is reported to
have been the infamous “patchwork man” created by Victor von Frankenstein.
Thanks to the efforts of Professor Brown (see his article on “The
House of Frankenstein”) it has become more widely known that there
was more than one “Frankenstein’s monster,” and that a few of these yet
live. The one working alongside Snow and Holmes may have been the original,
however.

1931. In 1931 Snow, by now established
as an adventurer of some note as well as a man acquainted with the unusual
and outré, was contacted (indirectly) by the author Howard Phillips
Lovecraft. Snow visited Lovecraft at his home in Providence, Rhode Island,
where Lovecraft reportedly showed Snow a series of alien “eggs” which had
appeared in Lovecraft’s house following a vision of some sort. Together
Snow and Lovecraft destroyed these eggs, which both were convinced would
become, once hatched, something horrible. An interesting postscript to
this encounter took place during a recent and very irregular excavation
of the tomb of H.P. Lovecraft in Providence. The excavation revealed that
something much more and much less than human had been residing in Lovecraft’s
grave. It is not unreasonable to suspect that this something gained
a foothold in Lovecraft’s body and, perhaps, his mind, following the 1931
incident.

1940s. Between 1931 and
1959 Snow’s personal history is spotty, with only rumored and incomplete
accounts of his explorations being available. There are whispers that he
encountered agents of the mythical “Old Ones,” that he fought with werewolves,
and that he ventured deep into the bowels of the Earth, but I have nothing
provable regarding this. Other accounts have him as a sort of freelance
adventurer-for-hire, doing work more than occasionally for various Western
governments against foreign and domestic threats.

1959. In 1959 Snow was a stowaway
onboard the Nautilus. What Snow was doing there, what Billy Smith (the
same member of The Four) was doing there, and why Snow was being fired
upon by Biggles (see below)–all of these things are not known to me, and
have been concealed by either The Four or The Three or both. But independent
witnesses have verified the presence of Snow, Smith, and Biggles at a firefight
on the Nautilus in Florida in the fall of 1959.

1967.In 1967 Snow fought against
a terrorist group in Marrakesh, Morocco.

1969. In 1969 Snow met
up with James “Biggles” Bigglesworth again and helped Biggles defeat a
terrorist’s attempt to subvert the British “Secret Intelligence Service.”
Biggles–

It has just occurred to me that some among
my readers may be unacquainted with Biggles, one of the more remarkable
individuals of the Twentieth Century. So, if my readers will indulge me
in yet another digression, I will provide, as briefly as possible, a biography
of Biggles.

Born in India in 1899 to ordinary English
parents–despite the proliferation of extraordinary talents arising from
India (see my forthcoming article “Jewel in the Crown of the Human Race”
exploring the many heroes springing from Indian soil) Biggles’ parents
were, as far as I’ve been able to discover, normal and not linked to the
Wold Newton family in any way–James Bigglesworth left school in 1916 to
fight the Germans during the war. He quickly learned how to fly and became
one of the most feared fighter pilots during the remainder of the war;
his personal tally of downed pilots has been concealed by the British government,
but it is rumored to be over 100. Because of his natural affinity
for flight and his unschooled (but substantial) talent for combat he came
to the attention “Major Raymond” of the British Intelligence Service, who
began using him for various missions, many of which remain Top Secret and
Classified even today. (Curiously, the identity of “Major Raymond” seems
to be something of a minor mystery. It is my belief that “Major Raymond”
is the same figure as “R.”–note the similar initial–who was the handler
of noted mystery writer Mr. Roger Ashenden.)

After
the war Biggles–now only 19, remember–formed his own air service, Biggles
and Company, and did a normal (if exciting and adventure-filled) business
while also carrying out various missions for the British “Secret Intelligence
Service” around the world, including fighting air pirates over the Indian
Ocean, slavers in Africa, and gold thieves in Australia. During World War
Two Biggles continued his dual role as a top fighter pilot and highly-rated
secret agent for the British government and for the American Office of
Strategic Services (O.S.S.).

After the war Biggles’ role grows obscured,
no doubt to the efforts of the British government and the Secret Service,
in the person of Admiral Miles Messervy, to keep his role a secret. I have
very little data on Biggles after the end of the second World War. He served
with the British “Secret Intelligence Service” through the 1970s, at which
point he left that group (whatever its real name) to join another intelligence
group, reputedly called the “Unreal Sanction Force.” At some point in the
mid-1950s Biggles, perhaps as a favor to him for his extensive service
to the Crown, received an anti-ageing formula (perhaps a variation of Holmes’
royal jelly bee pollen elixir). By the late 1990s Biggles was retired from
active service and performing consulting services only.

That is Biggles. He and Elijah Snow became
friends following their 1969 encounter, meeting on an irregular basis for
the next decade.

1975. Snow was one of the
last Americans to leave Saigon in 1975, although what he was doing there
remains unknown.

1980s. At some point in
the 1980s Snow was captured (for reasons unknown to me) by The Four and
subjected him to a series of memory implants, obscuring much of his true
history and overlaying lies and virtual memories over the rest. Snow liquidated
his funds, retreated to a shack in Arizona, and spent the next decade there.
In early 1999 he was approached by Jakita Wagner and made a member of the
Three (presumably at the behest of their mysterious backer).

Together the Three have carried out a number
of dangerous missions, including the rescue of Jim Anthony, the recovery
of evidence of several of the acts of The Four, and trips to Danjo-To and
Science City Zero. A state of undeclared war exists between The Four and
the Three, and only the future knows how this conflict will play out, or
what lies ahead for the Three, the Four, and humanity itself.

What makes The Three even more interesting
is the identity of their financial backer, the “fourth man,” and the ties
of this person to The Four, as well as to certain other figures mentioned
in this article.

This backer is, in fact

The
article ends here. The original paper is torn after the words “in fact,”
as if MN had for whatever reason only put part of the article in the mail.

I
just received a phone call from the Romney, West Virginia police. MN’s
body, along with scraps of paper that would likely have composed the remainder
of this article, were found in a motel room in Romney. MN was apparently
tortured, quite badly, before he died.